Contact Brad McRae

Spatial Ecologist

Background:
Brad began his career as an electrical engineer, designing printer electronics before returning to school to earn a Master's degree in Land Resources at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He did plant and wildlife ecology field work for the Forest Service in eastern Washington before going back to school once again, this time at Northern Arizona University, where he studied mountain lion population genetics and habitat connectivity for his PhD. There, he drew on his past career by applying models from electrical circuit theory to predict gene flow and explain genetic differentiation between mountain lion populations across the southwestern USA. After finishing his dissertation, he worked on connectivity and wildlife population modeling in Oregon (with the U.S. EPA) and then California (at UC Santa Barbara). He returned to Washington to take his current position with The Nature Conservancy in July 2008.

Current Projects/Professional Focus:
Brad is a Spatial Ecologist with the Washington Chapter's planning team. His primary focus is integrating connectivity into conservation planning in Washington. He is involved in efforts to incorporate climate change into Ecoregional Assessments and Conservation Action Plans. Brad is also responsible for Circuitscape, a software package for habitat connectivity modeling" with a link to our webpage: http://www.circuitscape.org.

Fun Fact:
The first cat Brad ever genotyped was his pet, Nappycat. He had to take a second sample after the first was contaminated with his own blood when the angry donor scratched him.